A very girlie post…

Hello Everyone and welcome to my November post – I cant believe that its November already this year has flown by completely.  This month I have been super busy – we have a lot of birthdays in November, so I have been busy making cards, two of which have made it onto this post.  I also decorated a frame using the new Maggie Holmes line Open Book. I also have two layouts for you using a mixture of the Shimelle papers and Project Life cards and Maggie Holmes Open Book.  So lets start with the layouts….

This layout is backed on a piece of the older Maggie Holmes Styleboard collection. I love how all the Maggie Holmes collections work well together – they are so versatile.  I punched some patterns into the edges of some white cardstock  using my punches and slightly distressed the edges.  Then I picked some of the new Maggie Holmes papers – ‘memento’  and ‘chapters‘ on both sides and the back of the ‘3×5 paper‘. I used these papers to make a mat for behind my picture and a cluster to go in the bottom right hand corner. I distressed all the edges of the papers again lightly with my fingers, just creasing the edges up and back slightly.

I added some of the Shimelle ephemera to the photo mat and the small cluster above the picture and cut some of the cameras out from the ‘grady‘ paper. I also used the MH’s ephemera and chipboard flower and dart. There are also some butterfly stickers from the Pebbles Home & Made line.  I finished off the clusters with some flowers and other goodies from my stash.  For my title I used the MH’s gold thicker letters, which I adore! I also punched some butterflies from some of the paper scraps and added those to my clusters, finishing them off with teeny tiny pearls from my stash.
For the second layout I wanted to use my Shimelle Project Life cards – these cards are so beautiful – the colours are so vibrant and the gold is so very shiny.
This time I backed my layout on some dark teal cardstock, then used the white card as my background, punching out some different detail on two of the edges and distressing them with my fingers. I picked my papers, using some of the scraps from the MH’s papers above along with the ‘sharman’ paper and the ‘blissful’ paper from the MH’s Styleboard collection. I also picked some of the Shimelle PL cards to add to the layout.  I decided to round the edges of the papers to match the PL cards and made a mat for my photo.  I attached another PL card to the right of the picture to hold my journalling. Dont forget when using PL cards you can cut them up and use them as embellishments as well as the whole card.  I made my card slightly smaller to fit my page and added another card in the middle to hold my journalling.
 
I wanted two clusters to the top left and bottom right. I used lace to form the base of my clusters and used off cuts of the papers, boarder strips and MH’s ephemera to build them up – finishing them off with chipboard hearts from the MH’s chipboard pieces.  I used the MH’s flowers and leaves ephemera in my main cluster, along with some flowers from my stash, finishing off with another gold thickers word. More punched butterflies and some Heidi Swapp gold splatters completed this page.
Next up is a card that I made for my Mother in Law for her birthday.  This card is made using mostly goodies from the Shimelle line. 
I used blue cardstock to make the base of the card. Strips of the ‘grady’ paper, ‘herschel‘ paper and ‘sharmen‘ paper formed the base of the card.  I then coloured an image from ‘The East Wind’ which is a digi stamp shop on Etsy which I backed with the same blue cardstock and adhered to the middle of the card. I used the Shimelle ephemera to decorate, along with some of the frames from Crate Papers Notes and Things collection.  The hearts are from the Shimelle sticker book and the sequins are from Studio Calico. I finished off with some letters and flowers from my stash and some Heidi Swapp colour shine in gold.
 
My second card is was for my Aunt. This card is made using Maggie Holmes Open Book product. I have used the flowers and leave ephemera as a decoration on this card and I love these so much.  Being someone that uses flowers a lot in my work to have some already cut makes a lovely addition to my stash and means that I don’t have to spend all that time fussy cutting flowers from the papers in the collection.
This card is very similar in style to the card above.  I cut a piece of the dark teal cardstock to 8×8 and made a boarder from the Open Book papers ‘clippings’ and ‘chapters’.  I coloured a digi-stamp from Saturated Canary and backed that on the dark teal cardstock and some gold card from my stash. I then decorated the card with the flowers and leaves ephemera from MH’s, some Heidi Swapp gold splatters and flowers from my stash.
 
For my final project I decorated a frame which was going to be my aunts birthday present.  I love using papers and ephemera for off the page creations like this – its a really fun way to use product and makes a change from layouts and cards.
 

 
To start I gave the whole frame a coat of gesso – this primes the surface and makes it easier to adhere the paper to the wood. I used a mix of MH’s papers to cover the frames front and sides, the papers were ‘momento‘ and ‘sweet story’, I used both sides of these papers.  I adhered them to the frame in strips using mod podge and a paint brush.  Once this was all dry I distressed the edges of the papers and dabbed them with some gesso to add to the distressed look.  Then I used the Open Book ephemera, stickers and flowers and leaves to add the decoration to the frame.  This again was stuck down using mod podge. 
 
I finished off with some chipboard pieces and some sequins from Studio Calico. The wood pieces are from my stash.
 
Thats all from me for November. I really hope that you have enjoyed my post as much as I enjoyed making everything for you all.  It is a very girlie post – both the Shimelle and the Maggie Holmes collections are very feminine but I just love them both. Even though they are very different styles they work fabulously together and are so much fun to play with.
See you in December (eeek! Christmas!!)